Fitch

The risk of a default chain reaction is looming over the $3.6 trillion market for wealth management products in China. WMPs, which traditionally funneled money from Chinese individuals into assets from corporate bonds to stocks and derivatives, are now increasingly investing in each other.

Today we find an even more striking example of just how broken the global bond market has become thanks to the ECB because as Reuters writes, Bayer could receive financing from none other than the European Central Bank to help fund its takeover of the world's largest seed company, US-based Monsanto, according to the terms of the ECB's bond-buying program.

Today we learned that not only was China going through with its unprecedented debt-for-equity swap, but it has already equitized over $220 billion in non-performing loans. Note: these are not traditional, Chapter 11 prepacks where the debt is converted into equity and the debt holder gets the keys to the company. In this case, it is the Chinese government itself which indirectly via state-owned banks, has become the de facto owner of countless companies.

Following a scramble by European nations to issue ultra long-dated government paper, which saw France and Belgium sell 50-year bonds last month, while Ireland and Belgium went all the way and issued century bonds, with even Switzerland locking in 42-year paper yesterday, moments ago Spain was the latest to extend maturities all the way to 2066 when it sold €3 billion in 50 year bonds at Midswaps+50. According to MarketNews, the issue was over 3 times oversubscribed with the orderbook closing at €10.5 billion.

China is the latest in a growing line of “command and control” economies that have risen to prominence, captured the imagination of people who find free markets too messy for comfort, and then blown up when it turns out that dictators have no idea how to allocate capital.

On May 7th, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or German Economic News, headlined, "USA planen mit TTIP Frontal-Angriff auf Gerichte in Europa” or “U.S. Plans Frontal Attack on Europe’s Courts via TTIP,” and reported that, “America’s urgency to sign TTIP with Europe has solid reason: Megabanks must protect themselves from claims by European investors who allege that they were cheated during the debt crisis. … The U.S. Ambassador to Italy has now let the cat out of the bag on this — probably unintentionally.”

Aeropostale's decline was swift. The brand was established in 1987, went public in 2002, and by 2010 it had a market cap of nearly $3 billion. However, by January 2015 the company of 21,000 employees had posted losses in its last three fiscal years, and with 2015 being the fourth consecutive year of losses, its market cap imploded to just $2.9 million.

Following this weekend's bankruptcies of Ultra Petroleum and Midstate Petroleum which added $3.1 billion to the mushrooming high-yield energy bond default volume tally, in addition to the $1.5 billion of credit facility defaults, the energy high-yield default has soared to a record 13% rate, surpassing the 9.7% mark set in 1999, according to Fitch Ratings.

After warning last year of a "practically unavoidable" hard-landing to come in China, George Soros unleashed his central-planner-crushing self last night on the great red ponzi. As we noted last night, Soros warned the "parabolic" rise in credit is very worrisome, and "eerily reminiscent of US in 2007-8," specifically adding that "most of the money that banks are supplying is needed to keep bad debts and loss-making enterprises alive." Soros' full discussion can be found below...

One day after stocks were this close from hitting new all time highs on what have been either ok earnings, if looking at non-GAAP data, or atrocious earnings, based on GAAP, and where any oil headline is now immediately translated as bullish by the oil algos, so far futures are relatively flat, while European stocks were at their moments ago in anticipation of the latest ECB announcement due out in just one hour. However, unlike last month's "quad-bazooka", this time the market expects far less from Draghi. “Having pulled put the monetary bazooka in March, the market is sensibly expecting no further policy measures from the ECB,”

Following yesterday's bankruptcy of Peabody Energy and today's Chapter 11 filing of XXI Energy, defaults among American junk bonds just topped $14 billion in April, the highest monthly volume in two years according to Fitch calculations, and that is only for the first two weeks. April's surge in bankruptcy filings is not unexpected: according to JPM's default tracker, the number of bankruptcies was on a tear in both the month of March and the first quarter.